Rounding up fascinating news and research in the field of forensic science.

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Month: September 2016

In 2002, Ray Krone became the 100th wrongfully imprisoned person to be exonerated by DNA analysis in the US, but only after spending ten years of his life detained in Arizona prisons, including a number of years on death row.

On the morning of 29th December 1991, the owner of the CBS Lounge in Phoenix, Arizona went to his bar to discover the door unlocked, the lights on, and the naked body of 36-year-old Kim Ancona on the floor of the men’s bathroom. The victim, who had worked in the bar as a waitress, had been brutally stabbed to death.

The subsequent examination of the scene was somewhat fruitless and, although saliva was recovered from Kim’s body, little other physical evidence could be found. The only piece of evidence investigators had to work with was a series of bite marks found on the victim’s breast and neck. As the investigation continued, police began interviewing those close to the victim in attempts to shed light on the events leading up to her death. It transpired that the victim had told a friend that Ray Krone, a regular customer at the bar, was to help her close up the bar the previous night. Investigators jumped at the possibility of a potential suspect.

During an interview with Krone, a detective noticed that he had a very distinctive deformity of his front teeth, no doubt causing a unique bite mark. This characteristic would later lead to the nickname of ‘the Snaggletooth Killer’. Krone was happy to oblige when asked to provide a Styrofoam impression of his teeth for comparison purposes.

However unfortunately for him, a forensic odontologist soon declared that the Styrofoam impression matched the bite marks found on the victim’s body.

Krone maintained his innocence, insisting that he was at home in bed at the time of the murder, a story corroborated by his roommate. Despite this, Ray Krone was arrested and charged with kidnapping, sexual assault and murder.

As the trial commenced, it was clear there was little evidence for the prosecution to present, so they focused their efforts on the bite mark comparison. They hired forensic odontologist Raymond Rawson to conduct the comparison between the bite marks on the victim’s body and the impression of Krone’s teeth. Using compelling video footage attempting to show the physical match between the two, Rawson informed the jury that the match was “100 per cent”, and that only Krone could have made those bite marks. The defence chose not to call upon their own court-appointed forensic odontologist.

Despite a lack of DNA analysis or eyewitness testimony linking Krone to the crime, and the bite mark comparison being the only physical evidence implicating him, Ray Krone was found guilty and sentenced to death.

Three years later Krone was awarded a re-trial due to the prosecution team concealing the persuasive video tape concerning the bite mark evidence until a day before the original trial, but once again he was found guilty. Despite the opportunity to rectify the conviction being wasted, trial judge James McDougall aired his uncertainty: “the court is left with a residual or lingering doubt about the clear identity of the killer. This is one of those cases that will haunt me for the rest of my life, wondering whether I have done the right thing”.

Forensic Odontology & Bite Mark Comparison

As DNA analysis was not carried out during this investigation, Krone’s conviction was almost entirely based on the ‘expert’ opinion that his teeth matched the bite marks on the victim’s body.

Dental identification is based on the theory that every individual’s dentition is unique, and thus bite marks made by a person will be distinguishable. In theory, this is true – we all have different combinations of jaw sizes, varying dental work and unique wear patterns to our teeth. Bite mark comparison may involve a variety of methods, including overlaying appropriately-sized photographs of teeth and bite marks and fitting together physical moulds.

At the time, there was little reason to doubt the testimony of the forensic odontologist hired by the prosecution. Raymond Rawson was a well-established expert who was certified by the American Board of Forensic Odontology, his findings in this case were supported by another expert, and the discipline of bite mark comparison had been practiced for almost 20 years. Furthermore, a 1984 study had provided “statistical evidence for the individuality of human dentition”. The expert witness testimony seemed perfectly reputable.

Well, that is until we look a little closer.

The seemingly convincing 1984 study was actually research conducted by Rawson himself, and has since been widely criticised as being a flawed study, largely because he used hand-traced dental impressions for his comparisons, a non-randomised subject selection process, and statistical tests not relevant to his type of data. Other experts had quite rightfully stated that the results of the study should absolutely not be used in a legal case.

A study conducted ten years previously comparing bite marks in wax and pig skin to the teeth of subjects stated that, although bite marks in wax were easily assessed, those made in pig skin were difficult to examine and the results unreliable. The research concluded that incorrect identification of bite marks on pig skin were made 24% of the time under laboratory conditions, and even as high as 91% of the time when based on photographs taken 24 hours after the bite marks were initially made. The study highlights the clear difficulties in subjective fields of work such as forensic odontology. Experts will often be required to examine bite marks that are hours or even days old, obscured by bruising and abrasions and typically not entirely representative of the biter’s teeth. At times it is challenging enough to merely identify an injury as a bite mark, let alone successfully compare it to a set of teeth.

Despite these apparent shortcomings, Ray Krone was to spend a decade of his life behind bars.

Exoneration

Fortunately for Krone, he had an undeterred family behind him maintaining his innocence and the means of hiring proficient legal help and in 2002, with the help of attorney Alan Simpson, he successfully appealed.

DNA analysis had become, by this point in time, a well-established technique frequently utilised in criminal investigations. Analysis of bodily fluids recovered from the crime scene a decade earlier soon proved not only Krone’s innocence, but also the identity of Kim Ancona’s real killer. Kenneth Phillips, a man with a long history of repeated violent sex offenses, was serving time in prison for the sexual assault of a 7-year-old girl, but at the time of Kim’s murder was living a mere 600 yards from the scene of the crime. Despite his close proximity to the bar, his deviant history and the fact that he was at the time of the murder on probation for the assault of a neighbouring woman, Phillips was never considered a suspect.

On 8th April 2002, Ray Krone left prison a free man, the 100th person to be exonerated by DNA evidence. He would certainly not be the last.

Krone now lives in Tennessee, where he has since dedicated his time to criminal justice reform and the campaign for the abolition of the death penalty.

“I would not trust the state to execute a person for committing a crime against another person. I know how the system works” – Ray Krone.